This course studies the evolution of detective fiction from its invention in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe in the 19th century to the present. In addition to reading writers from the United States and Great Britain, such as Agatha Christie, who helped transform detectives into a mainstay of popular fiction, we also study Latin American and African American authors who found in this genre a means with which to investigate and represent social and political injustice. In addition works by Poe and Christie, we will study stories and novels by Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Chandler, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, and Walter Mosley, among others.